What do you do when the law is meaningless?

I wondering whether or not a link exists between the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and current family law. In short, they both seem rather like witchhunts.

I've mentioned before that under the current family law system, any notion of rights is more or less cast aside - even the rights granted freemen in the Magna Carta (e.g. due process) would seem to be an improvement:

"Your job is not to become concerned about the constitutional rights of the man that you're violating ... Throw him out on the street, give him the clothes on his back and tell him, see ya around... we don't have to worry about the rights."

- quoted in Bleemer, Russ. 1995. "N.J. Judges Told to Ignore Rights in Abuse TROs," New Jersey Law Journal 140

Is the reaction to the BP oil spill much different?

• The US Congress is debating whether or not to retroactively change the liability limit for BP for spill-related expenses. How can you trust a government which retroactively changes the law? (An explicit violation of the U.S. constitution). It would be different if the law were changed only for future cases.
• Tax deductions. There are moves to prevent BP from taking tax deductions for its spill-related losses. Are these actual BP losses? It would be hard to argue otherwise. Does the tax law allow BP to deduct its losses? Seems so. So why change things? In the words of one of the authors of the bill:
  

  Claiming billions of dollars in losses from this spill is an affront to the hard-working people of the Gulf Coast who have lost their livelihood

  This seems like something that should again reduce trust in the government, but here it may at least come before the taxes are technically due.

• There seems to be a backlash even against BP's sponsorship of research into more environmentally friendly fuels, e.g., at UC Berkeley. Thankfully here the university doesn't seem to eager to chase BP away (although, that said, it would be hard to say no to anyone who wanted to give you $500 million). What's the money for?
  

  The oil giant gave UC Berkeley a $500 million grant in 2007 to create the Energy Biosciences Institute, which works to develop new sources of plant-based fuel.

  Plant-based fuel? Doesn't sound very closely related to the incident in the gulf

• Money the fisherman were paid by BP to help clean the oil spill won't be getting deducted from the lost income that the fisherman are suing BP for. Why doesn't income paid count against lost income?
  

  I did this to help the fisherman of the Gulf. I heard from them, they were upset and we wanted to help

  In short, the fisherman were sad. What a great legal argument.